Chapter I. THE SECRET
“My daughter,” said the Marquis of Marborough.
“Yes, my father,” replied the Lady Ermetta, who was of a most dutiful disposition, and when she did not say “No” said “Yes” with undeviating regularity.
“The hour has now arrived when I feel it incumbent on me to reveal to you the secret —the secret upon which hinges your future welfare and happiness, and is also the central point of interest in this story in which we are two of the principal characters. Therefore, arm yourself with fortitude, and prepare to hear it as becomes a heroine.”
“Very well, my father,” returned the dutiful girl, but will you kindly tell me exactly what to do.”
“Clasp your hands convulsively, lean forwards attentively, and with an expression of anxious horror on your beautiful features, exclaim, ‘Speak, speak, my father; I can bear the worst’”
The Lady Ermetta followed his directions to the eighth part of an affygraffy.
“You know, my child, that in the third and last chapter you are to be married, as becomes a heroine; and you also know that Baron Gadzooks is the bridegroom elect. But you do not know that a dark secret hangs over his birth, a secret which I am now about to reveal, therefore listen attentively.”
“I am all ears,” said the lovely girl.
“My dearest, that is a most irrational remark; now, really, how can you be all ears?”
The Lady Ermetta blushed to the tips of the articles in question, and muttered something that sounded like a request for her father to go and put his boots on.
“Silence, Ermetta!” said her father sternly, “such conduct is unbecoming in the heroine of a novel. Now, listen to me— The Baron was changed at birth.”
“Then Baron Gadzooks—”
“Is somebody else.”
“And somebody else?”
“Is the Baron. You now comprehend the situation.”
“Not altogether, my father, you have neglected to inform me who somebody else is.”
“That, my dear child, is a question that even the author could not answer.”
“Then supposing that I marry the Baron, I in fact marry ‘somebody else,’ and as you say that ‘somebody else’ is the Baron, why of course my husband will be the Baron.”
“How the deuce is that?” said the Marquis; “let’s see. If you marry the Baron—, but you can’t marry the Baron, because he’s not the Baron—he was changed at birth,”
“He’s somebody else.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Then, as he is not the Baron, somebody else is the Baron.”
“Well, yes, I suppose so.”
“Then, again, if I marry Gadzooks, I marry ‘somebody else,’ and somebody else, you say, papa, is the Baron,” said the Lady Ermetta, triumphantly. “Come now,” she added rather maliciously, “I think you are a little irrational now.”
“Really Ermetta, you will look at the matter from only one point of view; don’t you see that he’s not the right somebody else. There are any amount of somebodies else; but let me tell you all about it. This important secret came out in a conversation that was overheard to pass between two servants. One was the nurse of the then infant Gadzooks, the other was a fellow servant. The nurse was heard to make the following remark about her youthful charge:— ‘The blessed dear was a layin in my arms as quiet as a lamb, and smiling like a cherrup, when he changed all of a sudden, and has been that cross and frakshus ever since that I ain’t had a minnit’s peace with him.’ The person who overheard this startling disclosure was a devoted friend of the family; he acted with decision and promptitude. The servants were first got rid of—one was strangled, the other hung. He then took the secret, hushed it into a sound sleep, wrapped it carefully in tissue paper, and put it into a box.”
“Then where is the danger to come from?”
“Here lies the danger. When that devoted friend put the secret into the box he made a fatal mistake—he put it into the wrong box, and the secret might awake and find itself.”
“In the wrong box! How truly awful.”
“It is indeed; it might awake at the very moment of your marriage, and forbid the ceremony to proceed. There’s no knowing to what lengths a secret that’s been kept asleep, in the wrong box for many years might proceed when once awakened.”
The Lady Ermetta sobbed deeply. “I can never give up Gadzooks,” she said, “I have never seen him, for he has not been introduced personally into this story yet, but I feel that he has my poor heart.”
“Restrain your feelings, my child; picture to yourself what would be the result if the secret should awake after your marriage, and announce to an astonished world that you had married somebody else; why you might almost be tried for bigamy.”
“Have you the secret, my lord?”
“I have; the two boxes are in my study, but calm your agitation, for you know that Squire Hardpuller will soon be here, and should you bring yourself to think of giving up Gadzooks, why, he is rich, and I do not object to the idea of having him for a son-in-law.” So saying, the Marquis left Ermetta to her tears and lamentations.
Chapter II. THE SECRET DIES
Now that she was alone, Lady Ermetta gave full vent to her grief. “I can never give him up,” she murmured, between her convulsive sobs; “I feel that he is entwined around the very tendrils of my existence. We were to have been married in the third chapter, and now— this is the second, and we are to be separated. And what separates us? A secret! A secret that sleeps. Sleeps, why should it awake, why should it not die:” and uttering these last words in the strange hissing tone used by people who have determined on perpetrating some crime, Ermetta raised her head and stared into vacancy, with a cold hard look stealing over her sweet face.
The tears soon ceased to flow, her hands clenched themselves tightly, and she who might but just now have stood for a statue of the weeping daughter of Tantalus, was transformed into Lady Macbeth, demanding the daggers. Muttering sternly, “It shall be so,” she left the apartment with a step befitting a representative of that strong-minded woman.
Let us watch her as she enters her father’s study, where the light falls but dimly through the deep-set windows, as though winking at the deed about to be done. Watch her as she kneels before two quaintly carved ebony boxes, and applies her ear to the keyhole of each in turn. Watch her as the look of gratification steals over her face on detecting, in one, a low but perfectly distinct and regular respiration, the ghost of a feeble snore. Watch her as she applies the key to the lock, lifts the lid, and takes out the secret—takes it out gently and carefully, with the tender touch of a woman, so as not to disturb the slumber that has lasted now so long. Watch her, the guilty thing, as she starts at hearing the sound of voices in the hall, and, concealing the secret in her pocket, passes from the room to hasten to receive her expected visitor. As yet the deed is not done. As yet she can gaze out of those clear blue eyes with a soul unstained by actual murder. But how long will her innocence